Plagued by rumors of production issues, showrunner conflicts, and repeated premiere date push-backs, fans could be forgiven for harboring some concerns about the show.

After all, more than any other franchise out there, Star Trek defines not only a fandom for Trekkers, it embodies their moral code, their sense of representation, and even their hopes for humanity's future.

Not to mention the snazzy uniform update.

The casting news has periodically electrified fans over the years as they salivated over every bit of news they could find.

Michelle Yeoh as experienced Captain Philippa Georgiou in the early days of Star Fleet was universally lauded as she so easily epitomizes many of the qualities Star Trek is known for in its mentors.

And the signing of Sonequa Martin-Green as Commander Michael Burnham, the central character, delighted lovers of her performance on The Walking Dead even if it did put back the premiere date yet again.

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So what didST: Discovery deliver?

It gave us Trek on a GRAND scale with production value every bit as worthy of the movie screen as the latest J.J. Abrams offerings in that "other" timeline.

The ship's set design was retro yet novel but it was the Klingon sets that were truly jaw-dropping. Even as Burnham describes the Kahless Beacon for her data collector, we could see how epic it was.

The premiere successfully built onto a world many of us know as well as our childhood homes. A new-to-us starship, the U.S.S. Shenzhou, with a crew that knows and trusts each other.

Burnham: Your Chief Science Officer is worried. Something took a bite out of our relay. Saru thinks it was malicious.Georgiou: Saru is Kelpian. He thinks everything is malicious.

Most of all, it oriented us in the timeline and in the hierarchy. This is not the slick and shiny world of Next Generation, as pretty as it is. It's gritty and problematic.

The Shenzhou is far from being Star Fleet's flagship. It does the maintenance and the grunt work that ships like the Europa can't be bothered with. Its crew wants to see the stars and maybe crack a few jokes along the way.

All the familiar tech was present -- phasers, and transporters, and photon torpedoes. Oh my.

But to make it exciting, they're not advanced enough to have a probe to send into the scatter array, forcing Burnham to don a thruster suit and basically space walk into a radioactive star system. Awe. Some.

The bureaucracy rings a bell too. It seems, in Star Trek, that anytime we meet an admiral that we didn't know as a captain, he or she turns out to be pompous, bigoted, senile, or some combination.

One of the tests of captain-readiness must be the ability to take those pompous orders with good-natured stoicism.

And it's not just the tech and the politics that made us feel at home. Before there was Picard, before there was Kirk, before there was STAR FLEET, there was Sarek.

What a brilliant move to tie ST: Discovery into the 'verse with someone we've actually met before. Repeatedly.

After all, this isn't Star Wars where they can just throw in an early version of R2 or C-3PO to give us the twinges of nostalgia. They tapped into it here with Spock's freakin' DAD. If Sarek is in the house, this is proper Trek.

I found it weird to watch James Frain NOT being a villain but once I got past it, I appreciated his faithfulness to the canon and his respect for the character.

Ambassador Sarek has always connected with humans. That he mind melds with Michael Burnham to save her life as a child and then raises her on Vulcan is not a stretch of the imagination at all.

That he rolls around in her head all the time and can detect her imminent demise from a distant star system requires a little more suspension of disbelief.

The primary purpose of the premiere, more than anything else, was to ignite Burnham's hero's journey. Her ordinary world is that of Star Fleet even with her Vulcan upbringing. She has lived for nothing else all her life.

With the rise of the Klingon unification and the battle that destroys the Shenzhou and kills her friend and mentor, she is launched into a world where she has no rank, no crew, no freedom.

From my youth on Vulcan, I was raised to believe that service was my purpose. And I carried that conviction to Star Fleet. I dreamed of a day when I would command my own vessel and further the noble objectives of this great institution. My dream is over. The only ship I know in ruins. My crew... gone. My captain, my friend. I wanted to protect them from war, from the enemy. And we are at war and I am the enemy.

A close second in purpose is the focus on Klingon unification. For a warrior species, it has always fascinated me that so much of their society is driven by spirituality.

Chris Obi as T'Kuvma is amazing to watch as he emotes through the layers upon layers of prosthetics he is masked in. The charisma and fervor necessary to spark the faith of the Houses of the High Council are palpably infectious.

It'll be interesting to see how Voq is able to take up the torch of T'Kuvma's teachings and face the challenge of uniting a society that sees him as worthless and aberrant.

His path may be a parallel to Burnham's climb back into the Star Fleet ranks. I have to assume that when she joins the Discovery, most of the crew won't be welcoming her with open arms.

Needless to say, Star Trek: Discovery is NOT a light-hearted romp through the stars. This is dark Trek, war-time Trek. This is a fallible, dangerous, high-risk Trek.

The only thing I think I'll need to learn to love is the opening credits. I know Bryan Fuller was the guiding hand for most of the production and inception but the credits are about as un-Trek-like as the Scooby-Doo theme song.

Seriously. They look like Hannibal moved to Westworld and hired the orchestra from Game of Thrones. Until the final shot where they're all like, oh yeah, this is Star Trek, better throw in that ring tone everyone knows.